Part 18 (2/2)
was the linen trade to be cultivated. Mr. Firmin set up a workhouse in Aldersgate Street, of the results of which, after four years, he thus speaks:--”This, I am sure, is the worst that can be said of it, that it hath not been yet brought to bear its own charges.” Sir Matthew Hale was for setting up a public manufactory of coa.r.s.e cloth, of which the charges for materials and labour in producing thirty-two yards would be 11_l._ 15_s._ He calculated that the cloth, if sold, would only yield 12_l._ The excellent Judge does not make any calculation of the cost of implements, or rent, or superintendence. He desires to employ fifty-six poor people, who are paid by the parish 400_l._ per annum, and by this cloth manufacture he will give them the 400_l._ for their work, and save the parish their cost. One thing is forgotten. The pauper labour yielding no profit, and consequently preventing any acc.u.mulation, the labourers must be kept down to the minimum of subsistence, which appears to be about seven pounds per annum for each labourer. The earnings of the artisan and handicraft are estimated by Gregory King at thirty-eight pounds per annum. These were the wages of skilled labourers. The pauper labourers were unskilled. If these schemes had not broken down by their own weight, and workhouse manufactories had gone on producing a compet.i.tion of unskilled labourers with skilled, the rate of wages would have been more and more deteriorated, and the amount of poor seeking workhouse employment as a last resource more and more increased.
Experience has very satisfactorily demonstrated that these schemes for employing the poor ought to be strictly limited to the production of articles of necessity for their own consumption. Even the production of such articles is scarcely remunerating,--that is, the produce scarcely returns the cost of materials and superintendence. Even the boasted Free and Pauper Colonies of Holland have turned out to be commercial failures. They are not self-sustaining. The want of skill in the colonists, and their disinclination to labour, having no immediate individual benefit from their labours, have combined to produce the result that one good day-labourer is worth five colonists working in common. There are also tenants of small colonial farms, at a low rent, and having many advantages. They are not so prosperous as the little farmers out of the colony, who pay a higher rent, and have no incidental benefits. The solution of the question is thus given:--”The certainty that the society will maintain them, whether they save or not, has an unfavourable influence on their habits.”[42]
The increase of population was very small during the first fifty years of the eighteenth century. It absolutely declined at one period. The two million four hundred thousand pounds that were calculated by Gregory King as annual savings, were probably more and more trenched upon by pauperism and war, by ”malice domestic, foreign levy,” under a disputed succession. The upper cla.s.ses were licentious and extravagant; the labourers in towns were drunkards to an excess that now seems hardly credible. Hogarth's 'Gin Lane' was scarcely an exaggeration of the dest.i.tution and misery that attended this national vice. About the middle of the century, or soon after, sprang up many of the great mechanical improvements which made us a manufacturing people; and which, in half a century, added a third to the population. In spite of the most expensive war in which England had ever been engaged, the acc.u.mulated capital, chiefly in consequence of these discoveries and improvements, had increased as fast as the population in the second fifty years of the eighteenth century. In the present century the population has doubled in fifty years; and the acc.u.mulated capital has more than doubled.
Population has been recently increasing at the rate of one and a half per cent.; capital has been increasing at the rate of two and a half per cent.[43] It is this acc.u.mulation which has been steadily raising the rate of wages in many employments of industry; whilst the chemical and mechanical arts, the abundant means of rapid transit, the abolition or reduction of duties upon great articles of consumption, and the freedom of commercial intercourse, have given all the receivers of wages a greatly increased command of articles of necessity, and even of what used to be thought luxuries.
There is nothing more difficult in economical inquiries than the attempt to ascertain what was the actual rate of wages at any given period. The fluctuations in the value of money enter into this question, more or less, at every period of our history. We find the nominal rate of wages constantly increasing, from one generation to another, but we cannot at all be certain that the real rate is increasing. That nominal rate always requires to be compared with the prices of the necessaries of life. What pertains to wages pertains to all fixed money-payments. A Fellow of a college applied to Bishop Fleetwood to know if he could conscientiously hold his fellows.h.i.+p, when the statutes of the college, made in the time of Henry VI., say that no one shall so hold who has an estate of 5_l._ a year. The Fellow had an estate of much larger nominal amount. The Bishop made a very valuable collection of the prices of commodities, and he thus answers the conscientious inquirer:--
”If for 20 years together (from 1440 to 1460) the common price of wheat were 6_s._ 8_d._ the quarter; and if from 1686 to 1706 the common price of wheat were 40_s._ the quarter; 'tis plain that 5_l._ in H. VI. time would have purchased 15 quarters of wheat; for which you must have paid, for these last 20 years, 30 pound.
So that 30 pound _now_, would be no more than equivalent to 5 pound in the reign of H. VI. Thus if oats, from 1440 to 1460, were generally at 2_s._ the quarter, and from 1686 to 1706 were at 12_s._ the quarter, 'tis manifest that 12_s._ _now_ would be no more than equivalent to 2_s._ _then_, which is but a sixth part of it. Thus, if beans were _then_ 5_s._ and _now_ 30_s._ the quarter, the same proportion would be found betwixt 5_l._ and 30_l._ But you must not expect that everything will answer thus exactly. Ale, for instance, was, during the time of your founder, at three-halfpence the gallon; but it has been, ever since you were born, at 8_d._ at the least: which is but five times more, and a little over. So that 5_l._ heretofore (betwixt 1440 and 1460) would purchase no more ale than somewhat above 25_l._ would _now_.
Again, good cloth, such as was to serve the best doctor in your University for his gown, was (between 1440 and 1460) at 3_s._ 7_d._ the yard; at which rate, 5_l._ would have purchased 29 yards, or thereabouts. _Now_ you may purchase that quant.i.ty of fine cloth at somewhat less, I think, than 25_l._ So that 25_l._ _now_ would be an equivalent to your 5_l._ _then_, 250 years since, if you pay about 18_s._ the yard for your cloth. I think I have good reason to believe that beef, mutton, bacon, and other common provisions of life, were six times as cheap in H. VI. reign as they have been for these last 20 years. And therefore I can see no cause why 28 or 30_l._ per ann. should now be accounted a greater estate than 5_l._ was heretofore betwixt 1440 and 1460.”[44]
But we are not to infer from these considerations that the wages of labour ought to fluctuate with the prices of commodities, or that practically they do so fluctuate. If this were the principle of wages, every improvement which lowers the price of commodities would lower the rewards of labour. Almost every article of necessity is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, taking the average of years; and the larger amount of this cheapness has been produced by improvements in manufactures, by facilities of communication, and by the removal of taxation. At the same time, taking the average of years and of employments, wages have risen.
There must be some general cause in operation to produce this result.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Irish Mud-cabin.]
The wages of labour cannot be reduced below the standard necessary to support the labourer and his family whilst he produces. If he cannot obtain this support he ceases to be a producer. He is starved out of existence; or he falls upon the public fund for the support of want; or he becomes a beggar or a thief. In states of society where there is no acc.u.mulating capital, the labourer necessarily receives low wages, because he maintains himself at the minimum of subsistence. Our poet Spenser, writing nearly three centuries ago upon the miseries of Ireland, describes the cottiers as inhabiting ”swine-sties rather than houses.” Swift, long after, describes the same state of things:--”There are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato plantation.” This condition of society unhappily lasted up to our own day. If the Irish cottier had been a labourer for wages instead of deriving his miserable living direct from the land, he would have been no better off, unless his desire for something higher than the coa.r.s.est food, and the most wretched lodging, had set some limit to the increase of population beyond the increase of capital. Population necessarily increases faster than subsistence when there is no restraint upon the increase by the disposition to acc.u.mulate on the part of the labourer. There may be acc.u.mulation in the form of his money-savings; and there may be acc.u.mulation in an increase of the conveniences of life by which he is surrounded. When there is neither money saved nor comforts increased--when there is no acc.u.mulation for the gratification of other wants than that of food--compet.i.tion is driving the labourers to the lowest point of misery. The compet.i.tion in Ireland was for the possession of land, at an extravagant rent, out of the labour upon which the cottier could only obtain the very lowest amount of necessaries for his subsistence. If, in the habits of the whole body of the peasantry, clothes and furniture had been as necessary as potatoes, the oppressive exactions of the landlords must have yielded to what then would have been the natural rate, whether we call it profit or wages, necessary for the maintenance of that peasantry; and the necessity, on their part, for maintaining the average _status_ of their cla.s.s, would in a considerable degree have kept down the inordinate increase of the people. A century ago the great body of the working-people of England ate rye bread, which is cheaper than wheaten. If all the workers were to come back to rye-bread, the rate at which they could be comfortably maintained would be somewhat less; and unless the acc.u.mulation from the economy were expended universally in some improved accommodation, labourers would gradually arise who would be contented with the smaller amount necessary for subsistence, and the greater number of labourers seeking for wages would depress the amount paid to each individual labourer.
”In England and Scotland,” says Mr. Morison, ”the cla.s.ses living by wages form the majority of the population.” It has been estimated by Mr.
Greg that the annual amount paid in wages is a hundred and forty millions sterling; to which may be added twenty millions for the board of domestic servants. The profits of all the operations of industry to the capitalists are estimated by Mr. Morison at ninety millions. The census returns show that there were three hundred and fifty-four thousand masters in trades, and farmers, employing fourteen hundred thousand men. This gives a proportion of about four men employed to one employer. Compared with the estimate of profits it shows that each employer, a.s.suming the calculation to be correct, would derive a revenue of two hundred and fifty pounds a year as the recompense of his capital, skill, and risk. This is not so large an aggregate profit as is ordinarily supposed. The men employed would each receive a revenue of one hundred a year. But we must add a large number to the men receiving wages, who would not be returned by their employers; and the calculation of payments must be further diminished by the consideration that in many branches of industry, and in factory labour especially, a very large number of females are employed, as well as boys. But the fact of the general proportion of wages to profits is sufficiently striking to show that the inequality of the condition of the labourer and the employer is not so extravagantly great as we have been accustomed of late years to hear a.s.serted.
In looking back upon the historical evidence which we possess, imperfect as it is, of the condition of society at various periods of our industrial progress, we cannot doubt that there has been a process constantly going forward by which the circ.u.mstances of all cla.s.ses have been steadily raised. In the table of Gregory King, which we have several times referred to, the average income of ten thousand merchants is put down at three hundred a year; of shopkeepers and tradesmen at forty-five pounds; of farmers at forty-two pounds; and of labouring people at fifteen pounds. The income of gentlemen is taken at two hundred and eighty pounds a year. The increase of the means of these various cla.s.ses at the present day as compared with the end of the seventeenth century, has certainly been threefold. If we turn to the pa.s.sage which we have quoted from the 'Chronicon Preciosum,' originally published in 1707, we may at once compare the advantages which a threefold increase of means will procure. Wheat is not six pounds a quarter, nor broadcloth two pounds fourteen s.h.i.+llings a yard,--which would be the case if we trebled the prices of 1707. We have abundance of conveniences and comforts of which the people of Queen Anne's reign had no notion, which have been bestowed upon us by manufactures, and commerce, and scientific agriculture.
We have already stated and ill.u.s.trated the general principle that the wages of labour are determined by the acc.u.mulations of capital, compared with the number of labourers. Hence it necessarily results that, as has been forcibly expressed, ”the additional capital, whenever it is productively employed, will tend as certainly to the benefit of the working population at large as if the owner were a trustee for their benefit.”[45] But the profitable employment of capital depends very greatly upon activity, knowledge, and foresight on the part of the capitalist. It was for the want of these qualities that all the old schemes for providing labour out of a common stock chiefly broke down.
Sir Matthew Hale, in his plans for employing paupers in spinning flax and weaving cloth, knew theoretically the truth that the amount of capital available for the payment of labour would be largely increased by the rapidity with which it might be turned over. He says, ”If it could be supposed that the cloth could be sold as soon as made,--which is not, I confess, reasonably to be expected--then a stock of 24_l._ would, by its continual return, provide materials and pay the workmen for one loom's work in perpetuity.” The ”if” expresses the difference between individual commercial activity and knowledge, and official sluggishness and incapacity. But it also expresses the difference between the commerce of our days, and that of the end of the seventeenth century. Without roads, or ca.n.a.ls, or railroads, how difficult was it to bring the seller and the buyer together! All manufactures would be, for the most part, local. The cloths of Kendal might go to the neighbouring fairs on packhorses; and thence slowly spread through the country by pedlers and other small dealers; and the proceeds might return to the manufacturer at the end of a year. But the rapid turning over of capital which begins with buying a bale of cotton at New York, and having it in Sydney in the shape of calico in three months, with the bill that is to pay for it drawn at Manchester, accepted in Sydney, and discounted in London in another three months, is a turning over of capital which was scarcely imagined by the projectors and practical traders of a century ago.
This rapid turning over of capital, and the consequent more rapid acc.u.mulation of the labour-fund, depends upon the confidence of the capitalist that his capital will work to a profit. It will not so work if he is to be undersold. If wages could press upon profit beyond a certain ascertained limit, he would be undersold. The home compet.i.tion of localities and individuals is perpetually forcing on the most economical arrangements in production. The foreign compet.i.tion is doing so still more. If we have increased productiveness here, through scientific application, the same increased productiveness, from the same causes, is going forward elsewhere. 'Price-Currents' supply a perpetual barometer of industrial cloud or suns.h.i.+ne; and the manufacturer and merchant have constantly to unfurl or furl their sails according to the indications. Whenever there is s.h.i.+pwreck, the s.h.i.+p's crew and the captain partake of a common calamity; and the calamity is always precipitated and made more onerous when, from any cause, there is not cordial sympathy and agreement.
[37] We have already noticed the ancient oppressive laws for the regulation of labour, in Chap. VII. We recur to them here more particularly, as ill.u.s.trating the principle of Wages.
[38] See the full 'Charge' in the 'Harleian Miscellany.'
[39] See the Evidence on Poor-laws before a Committee of House of Commons, 1837.
[40] Hearth-money was a tax upon houses according to the number of chimneys, at the rate of two s.h.i.+llings a chimney, for every house having more than two chimneys.
[41] See the pa.s.sage in Dunoyer, 'Liberte du Travail,' tom. i. p. 416.
[42] Sir John M'Neill's 'Report on Free and Pauper Colonies in Holland.'
1853.
[43] Morison, 'Labour and Capital,' Appendix B.
[44] Chronicon Preciosum, 1745, p. 136.
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